The Andhra Pradesh government today constituted a committee to combat increased shoreline erosion of coastal Visakhapatnam.
Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu has asked the committee to come up with immediate steps and long-term solutions to arrest coastal erosion.
He appointed Visakhapatnam Port Trust Chairman M T Krishna Babu as co-ordinator of the committee, while representatives from the National Institute of Ocean Technology, National Institute of Oceanography, Andhra Pradesh State Remote Sensing Applications Centre, Andhra University (Visakhapatnam), IIT Chennai and various ports would be a part of the panel, a state government release said.
Sea erosion has been wearing coastal land away and beach or dune sediments have been removed due to action of sea waves, tidal currents, wave currents or high winds, the release said.
Oceanography experts informed the AP Chief Minister that erosion has been taking place at an unprecedented rate during the past year and that the next 20 years would witness drastic changes, it said.
Keeping this in view, the AP Chief Minister directed officials to monitor the changes continuously and come up with effective solutions, it said.
"He added that DELFT University in Netherlands is an institution studying coastal erosion. We could bring in experts from the university and work with them to combat beach erosion," Naidu said, according to the release.
The AP Chief Minister ordered officials to work on strengthening beach boundaries from Rushikonda to Visakhapatnam city.
